Petition for more democracy & cash for #Manchester #climate action. Help!!

On Monday 10th February a new petition went live on Manchester City Council’s website. It calls on the Council to

Establish a permanent “Climate and Environment Scrutiny Committee”, of equal standing to the existing 6 scrutiny committees
Make strenuous efforts to secure additional funding for climate action, including the use of some of its strategic reserves.

Anybody who lives, works or studies within Manchester City Council’s boundaries can sign – no age or nationality restriction. To sign online you need an account. If you don’t have one, it takes literally two minutes to set up- click here).

Please, sign it and SHARE THE HECK out of it on social media and also by contacting friends and acquaintances by phone, text, carrier pigeon. We are calling this “10 on the 10th for the democracy and local climate action cash.“ And if you’re reading this later than Monday, obviously, please do the same: we are going to keep collecting till we get 4000 valid signatures, and so force a debate in Full Council.

We also hope to have people (you?!) out collecting signatures in all 32 wards of the city. We have written some guidance on how to collect valid signatures. Please read this before downloading the collection sheet. We urgently need volunteer collectors for this Friday’s Climate Strike, 12-3pm St Peter’s Square.

Every week we will be announcing how many new signatures we’ve got in the previous week, and where those people live/work/study. We want to get good coverage across all 32 wards…. Alongside this, we will be trying to get people to lobby their councillors (who are allowed to sign, btw) in support of what the petition calls for – more democracy and more cash for climate action, locally and at the city level. You can find out who your councillors are by typing in your postcode here.

This is an ENORMOUS amount of work for the small, unpaid core group of CEM. All its members are juggling many other commitments. If you can get involved, for any amount of time, at any skill level, please get in touch via petition@climateemergencymanchester.net There will be no emotional blackmail, no dumping of too-big tasks on you. We will try to make it, within the constraints of the work, as interesting as possible. We urgently need researchers, graphic designers, signature collectors etc.

Here are some ideas for what else you could do after signing.

If you want to be involved in CEM’s other work, and not the petition, that’s totally cool – email us on contact@climateemergnecymanchester.net

Next date for your diary – Thurs 13th February, 7pm to 9pm – launch of “Manchester City Council and Climate Change: a guide for beginners”. The Sandbar, 120 Grosvenor St. No need to book, free.

Oh, and here is a first stab at a slideshow/Instagrammable thing. If anyone has suggestions for improving it, please get in touch.